The British hacks seem to think so, after they painted John Terry’s quotes about meetings with the manager as a sign he was trying to take over the team from Fabio Capello. Terry said yesterday in front of the press pack that he would be leading a group of players to discuss the problems within the England squad, and they have interpreted that as a rebellion which the Italian has had to ‘crush’. However, the quotes are pretty tame, in all honesty.

‘The players can say how they feel and, if it upsets him, then I'm on the verge of just saying: ‘You know what? So what?’’ said Terry. ‘If we can't be honest with each other, then there's no point us being here.

‘We owe it to ourselves and to everyone in the country that, if we feel there's a problem, there's no point in keeping it in. If I say something tonight, and I probably will and a few others will, then I'm doing the best for England.

‘With previous managers, I've stood up and others have done the same. It's not one of those things where the manager calls the shots and that's it. People have got this picture of him where you can't say stuff in meetings. We have a responsibility to ourselves, to the manager and everyone else to voice an opinion and hope he takes it on board.

‘I went to see Franco Baldini after the game and said: ‘Look, let everyone have a beer and speak to the manager. Flippin' hell, let's just switch off.’ We did. The manager was sitting there with a bottle of red wine and his staff. It was more relaxed from him and us. For the first time since the manager has taken over we sat there and he let us have a beer. Seven or eight players sat there talking about the game. It was good to get things off our chest and express how we felt. The discussions between the players will stay private, but it was really nice to unwind.’ It’s hardly ‘go f*** yourself, you filthy son of a b****’, is it?